BYU Studies Quarterly
Keywords
government, goodness, China, Confucius
Abstract
For nearly a thousand years (from around 960 to 1905 CE), becoming a government official in imperial China required passing a battery of multiday, multisubject, anonymously graded written exams requiring decades of intensive preparation. Eighteenth-century European politi- cal thinkers, including Voltaire, admired China’s system for using meritocratic criteria, as opposed to aristocratic birth, to select government officials. The exams tested not only scholars’ abilities in history, philosophy, government, and literature, but also—in theory at least—their personal cultivation of moral virtues such as benevolence and integrity. Good government required goodness.
Recommended Citation
Inouye, Melissa Wei-Tsing
(2022)
"Good Government Begins with Self-Government,"
BYU Studies Quarterly: Vol. 61:
Iss.
1, Article 4.
Available at:
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/byusq/vol61/iss1/4